


As Kill a King and Marry with his Brother

by Kalypso



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 17:01:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16791043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalypso/pseuds/Kalypso
Summary: When Oliver Welles comes to Ellen Fanshaw's dressing-room to tell her that it's time to doHamletagain, they both know they're returning to a minefield.





	As Kill a King and Marry with his Brother

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AJHall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJHall/gifts).



Ellen's removing her make-up after an evening performance of _The Winter's Tale_ when Oliver strolls into her dressing-room. Hearing someone at the door, she's expecting Tom, the boy playing Florizel; on seeing the all-too-familiar face of her director, she scowls and turns back to her mirror.

"I thought you should know we're doing the Danish play next season," he says.

She stops, and stares at his reflection. He's studying hers, waiting to observe her reaction.

"Already?" It's the only word that comes to mind that isn't an expletive, and she can't decide which expletive would best convey the dozen emotions that are rushing into her head.

"It's seven years. Some might say it's high time for a festival dedicated to Shakespeare to return to his greatest play. The board think so, at any rate."

_Only seven years since I was Ophelia. And now..._

"You'll be a great Gertrude, Ellen." He knows her too well. "It's a more interesting role and, really, you were mature enough last time, but..."

_But Geoffrey would have killed you if you'd tried to cast me as his mother._

She peels off her false eyelashes, and speaks as casually as Oliver's trying to do. "Who are you getting for Hamlet?"

"We're in talks with Jack Crew's agent."

"Who the hell...?"

"A young American. He's done a few movies, which should help at the box office."

_Some squeaking film star boy my Geoffrey's greatness..._

"He's young and pretty - that's usually enough for you, isn't it?" He grimaces.

That really is too much. She turns round and glares at him directly. "For fuck's sake, Oliver, do you seriously think I'd assign leading roles from the casting couch? I still have some dramatic integrity, even if you don't!" This is why she doesn't usually choose actors as lovers, to avoid this sort of jibe. Tom was an exception: the red-ringletted girl playing Mopsa had him cornered in the bar one night, and she took pity on seeing the panic in his eyes. She's had no reason to regret it... so far.

"Go and see one of Crew's films, Ellen," says Oliver. "I think the boy's got something. I sold him to the board as a star, but there's an actor in there too. Probably. Anyway, there's no one up to it here. Your Florizel will do perfectly well as Rosencrantz. Or Guildenstern, of course."

She's not going to suggest he's up to playing Laertes - not after the casting couch comment. In any case, Oliver's annoyingly right. He still has some judgment, however stale his leadership of the festival has become.

There's a knock at the door.

"Come in," she calls.

It is Tom this time, but he hesitates on seeing who's with her. She doesn't think he overheard them; he always seems nervous around the director.

"Oh, don't mind me, Florrie, I'm just going," says Oliver. He pauses a moment, leans down over Ellen's chair and kisses her forehead. Then he leaves.

Tom stands staring at her, tongue-tied.

"What?" she asks, more sharply than she intended.

"Oh... nothing," he says. "I was just thinking, you and Oliver Welles must have known each other a very long time."

"Too long," she says, briskly.

"But you've spent so much of your career here, in New Burbage. You must really like working with him."

"What are you trying to suggest - he's secretly straight, and we've been married all along?"

"Oh - no - I..."

"We're theatre people, haven't you heard the term 'luvvie'? We're always kissing people, whether we like them or not."

"Yes, of course, I know. I didn't see anything... sexual... when he kissed you just now. It was... touching. I suddenly thought he must really care about you."

"Oliver's a maudlin drunk," she says. "I advise you to keep out of the way once he's had a few, or it may be _you_ that ends up as the target of his sentimentality." She stands up. "Give me a minute to get out of costume, and then let's get out of here."

But Oliver wasn't drunk tonight, she thinks, a few hours later, as the boy sleeps peacefully beside her. No sign of it. Not even a bit of Dutch courage to help him tell her about _Hamlet_. He'd wanted all his faculties about him for that. Perhaps he'd thought she'd say she wouldn't do it.

And she could say no to Gertrude, just as she could have said no to every part he's given her over the past seven years. She could have walked out, and made a career elsewhere. But she hasn't. She just can't make the break.

Oliver's right; she is Gertrude, and always has been. And he's Claudius. And Geoffrey? Now she sees him not as Prince Hamlet, but the King, betrayed by the two people he loved and trusted most. Though it was Ellen who poured the poison in his ear, when she told him she'd fucked Oliver.

The day after the night before. The first night of _Hamlet_ , that astonishing night, when all three of them knew they'd done the best work of their lives, but more than that, they could go on and do it again, and again. And they were so intoxicated by their own brilliance that they ran out of the theatre and danced crazily down the street, with Geoffrey still in costume and flourishing his sword, all for one and one for all, and then... 

And then Geoffrey was babbling about babies and bridesmaids, and she was so high on love and what they'd just done on stage that she believed him, believed she could have one true love, believed she could play the roles of wife and mother as well as Ophelia and Juliet. So she and Geoffrey had run off to make babies, and left Oliver shouting in the cold.

But in the morning, when Geoffrey, still high on love and his own genius, promised her breakfast in bed and skipped down to the kitchen, she began to doubt. Babies. Motherhood. The pram in the hall. Could she really give everything to her art - deliver performances like the one she'd given the previous night - when she was worrying about whether the child waiting for her at home might be crying? She didn't tell Geoffrey; she knew he'd tell her to use it, that motherhood would somehow make her an even better actress. But she'd told her director, when he came to her dressing-room that night. The second night, when she was already beginning to feel she wasn't capturing Ophelia's soul the way she had on the first. And when he reached out and took her in his arms, she understood exactly what she was doing - sabotaging that happy-ever-after dream Geoffrey had offered, so she could cling to the rocky reality she knew. She half-hoped he'd walk in on them, and save her the ordeal of having to tell him.

And Oliver, why had he done it? Sex with a surrogate for Geoffrey, she'd assumed at the time. Then, she saw it as his way of regaining control: he'd loved her love affair with Geoffrey while it was something he was directing, an extension of their lives on stage, but their crime was to go off-script and start writing their own play. Several weeks later, when she was waiting at the clinic, she realised that the obvious revenge on a couple who'd run away from him to make babies was to plant his own cuckoo in the love-nest. She'd never know if he'd succeeded; by then, Geoffrey was on a psychiatric ward, and even if all _that_ hadn't happened there was no way she was carrying a child by either of them. Finally, as the years passed, she'd wondered whether Oliver's intention had been to drive her out; perhaps, once he felt the triangle was tilting too far away from him, he'd decided to drop her and keep Geoffrey, by showing him that she was nothing but a slut. _Leonato's Hero, your Hero, every man's Hero._

But it was Geoffrey who'd been driven out, leaving Ellen and Oliver, Gertrude and Claudius; together they have presided over their court, the theatre, but they both know there's something rotten in the festival of New Burbage, and it's their guilt. That's what binds them now, the knowledge of what they did to the man they loved, when once that love united them. Staying with Oliver has been her penance for what she has done. Ending up with Ellen when he wanted Geoffrey has been his.

But perhaps, she thinks, returning to _Hamlet_ will mark the end of that penance. Seven years - wasn't that the term Olivia planned to spend mourning her lost brother? Though in the end it can't have been more than a few weeks before she fell for Cesario and all that went out of the window. Ellen's hardly been a veiled cloistress - she's had plenty of Cesarios in the past seven years - but maybe it has been a time of mourning, a time when she couldn't move on with her life.

Use it, Geoffrey would say. Use your knowledge of guilt to play Gertrude.

 _O Hamlet, speak no more:_  
_Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;_  
_And there I see such black and grained spots_  
_As will not leave their tinct._

And once she's played it out on stage, maybe she can let go of what happened. Yes, it's time for Ellen to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them.

She gets out of bed, goes to the bookshelf, and pulls out the battered red text.

**Author's Note:**

> It's more than seven years! It's _obviously_ more than seven years! Maybe fourteen... But canonically we're told, repeatedly, that it's seven, and seven years has a lot of resonances, biblical and all that. Plus it's interesting that one of Shakespeare's so-called "lost years" periods ran from 1585 to 1592, so maybe that's an analogy for Geoffrey disappearing for seven years. Anyway, that's not what this is about.


End file.
